ing. Flaw, a sudden gust of wind. 4. Port, harbor. 6.
Brine, the sea. 7. A-main', with sudden force. 8. Weath'er, to endure, to
resist. 9. Spar, a long beam. 13. Helm, the instrument by which a ship is
steered. 18. Card'ed, cleaned by combing. 19. Shrouds, sets of ropes
reaching from the mastheads to the sides of a vessel to support the masts.
Stove, broke in.

NOTES.--This piece is written in the style of the old English ballads. The
syllables marked (') have a peculiar accent not usually allowed.

4. The Spanish Main was the name formerly applied to the northern coast of
South America from the Mosquito Territory to the Leeward Islands.

15. The reef of Norman's Woe. A dangerous ledge of rocks on the
Massachusetts coast, near Gloucester harbor.

19. Went by the board. A sailor's expression, meaning "fell over the side
of the vessel."

LXX. ANECDOTES OF BIRDS. (193)

1. I had once a favorite black hen, "a great beauty," as she was called by
everyone, and so I thought her; her feathers were so jetty, and her
topping so white and full! She knew my voice as well as any dog, and used
to run cackling and bustling to my hand to receive the fragments that I
never failed to collect from the breakfast table for "Yarico," as she was
called.

2. Yarico, by the time she was a year old, hatched a respectable family of
chickens; little, cowering, timid things at first, but, in due time, they
became fine chubby ones; and old Norah said, "If I could only keep Yarico
out of the copse, it would do; but the copse is full of weasels and of
foxes.

3. "I have driven her back twenty times; but she watches till some one
goes out of the gate, and then she's off again. It is always the case with
young hens, Miss; they think they know better than their keepers; and
nothing cures them but losing a brood or two of chickens." I have often
thought since that young people, as well as young hens, buy their
experience equally dear.

4. One morning; after breakfast, I went to seek my favorite in the poultry
yard; plenty of hens were there, but no Yarico. The gate was open, and, as
I concluded she had sought the forbidden copse, I proceeded there,
accompanied by the yard mastiff; a noble fellow, steady and sagacious as a
judge.

5. At the end of a lane, flanked on one side by a quickset hedge, on the
other by a wild common, what was called the copse commenced; but before I
arrived near the spot I heard a loud and tremendous cackling, a